Gargantua and Pantagruel
put us more to a plunge and nearer our wits’ end by this sole herb of his
than did of old the Aloidae by overturning mountains. He very speedily is
to be married, and shall have many children by his wife. It lies not in
our power to oppose this destiny; for it hath passed through the hands and
spindles of the Fatal Sisters, necessity’s inexorable daughters. Who knows
but by his sons may be found out an herb of such another virtue and
prodigious energy, as that by the aid thereof, in using it aright according
to their father’s skill, they may contrive a way for humankind to pierce
into the high aerian clouds, get up unto the springhead of the hail, take
an inspection of the snowy sources, and shut and open as they please the
sluices from whence proceed the floodgates of the rain; then, prosecuting
their aethereal voyage, they may step in unto the lightning workhouse and
shop, where all the thunderbolts are forged, where, seizing on the magazine
of heaven and storehouse of our warlike fire-munition, they may discharge a
bouncing peal or two of thundering ordnance for joy of their arrival to
these new supernal places, and, charging those tonitrual guns afresh, turn
the whole force of that artillery against ourselves wherein we most
confided. Then is it like they will set forward to invade the territories
of the Moon, whence, passing through both Mercury and Venus, the Sun will
serve them for a torch, to show the way from Mars to Jupiter and Saturn.
We shall not then be able to resist the impetuosity of their intrusion, nor
put a stoppage to their entering in at all, whatever regions, domiciles, or
mansions of the spangled firmament they shall have any mind to see, to stay
in, to travel through for their recreation. All the celestial signs
together, with the constellations of the fixed stars, will jointly be at
their devotion then. Some will take up their lodging at the Ram, some at
the Bull, and others at the Twins; some at the Crab, some at the Lion Inn,
and others at the sign of the Virgin; some at the Balance, others at the
Scorpion, and others will be quartered at the Archer; some will be
harboured at the Goat, some at the Water-pourer’s sign, some at the Fishes;
some will lie at the Crown, some at the Harp, some at the Golden Eagle and
the Dolphin; some at the Flying Horse, some at the Ship, some at the great,
some at the little Bear; and so throughout the glistening hostelries of the
whole twinkling asteristic welkin. There will be sojourners come from the
earth, who, longing after the taste of the sweet cream, of their own
skimming off, from the best milk of all the dairy of the Galaxy, will set
themselves at table down with us, drink of our nectar and ambrosia, and
take to their own beds at night for wives and concubines our fairest
goddesses, the only means whereby they can be deified. A junto hereupon
being convocated, the better to consult upon the manner of obviating a so
dreadful danger, Jove, sitting in his presidential throne, asked the votes
of all the other gods, which, after a profound deliberation amongst
themselves on all contingencies, they freely gave at last, and then
resolved unanimously to withstand the shocks of all whatsoever sublunary
assaults.
Chapter 3.LII.
How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not
able to consume it.
I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might
be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of
this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it,
if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do,
they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have
told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you. But to enter in
thereat, because it is of a knaggy, difficult, and rugged access, this is
the question which I ask of you. If I had put within this bottle two
pints, the one of wine and the other of water, thoroughly and exactly
mingled together, how would you unmix them? After what manner would you go
about to sever them, and separate the one liquor from the other, in such
sort that you render me the water apart, free from the wine, and the wine
also pure, without the intermixture of one drop of water, and both of them
in the same measure, quantity, and taste that I had embottled them? Or, to
state the question otherwise. If your carmen and mariners, entrusted for
the provision of your houses with the bringing of a certain considerable
number of tuns, puncheons, pipes, barrels, and hogsheads of Graves wine, or
of the wine of Orleans, Beaune, and Mireveaux, should drink out the half,
and afterwards with water fill up the other empty halves of the vessels as
full as before, as the Limosins use to do in their carriages by wains and
carts of the wines of Argenton and Sangaultier; after that, how would you
part the water from the wine, and purify them both in such a case? I
understand you well enough. Your meaning is, that I must do it with an ivy
funnel. That is written, it is true, and the verity thereof explored by a
thousand experiments; you have learned to do this feat before, I see it.
But those that have never known it, nor at any time have seen the like,
would hardly believe that it were possible. Let us nevertheless proceed.
But put the case, we were now living in the age of Sylla, Marius, Caesar,
and other such Roman emperors, or that we were in the time of our ancient
Druids, whose custom was to burn and calcine the dead bodies of their
parents and lords, and that you had a mind to drink the ashes or cinders of
your wives or fathers in the infused liquor of some good white-wine, as
Artemisia drunk the dust and ashes of her husband Mausolus; or otherwise,
that you did determine to have them reserved in some fine urn or reliquary
pot; how would you save the ashes apart, and separate them from those other
cinders and ashes into which the fuel of the funeral and bustuary fire hath
been converted? Answer, if you can. By my figgins, I believe it will
trouble you so to do.
Well, I will despatch, and tell you that, if you take of this celestial
Pantagruelion so much as is needful to cover the body of the defunct, and
after that you shall have enwrapped and bound therein as hard and closely
as you can the corpse of the said deceased persons, and sewed up the
folding-sheet with thread of the same stuff, throw it into the fire, how
great or ardent soever it be it matters not a straw, the fire through this
Pantagruelion will burn the body and reduce to ashes the bones thereof, and
the Pantagruelion shall be not only not consumed nor burnt, but also shall
neither lose one atom of the ashes enclosed within it, nor receive one atom
of the huge bustuary heap of ashes resulting from the blazing conflagration
of things combustible laid round about it, but shall at last, when taken
out of the fire, be fairer, whiter, and much cleaner than when you did put
it in at first. Therefore it is called Asbeston, which is as much to say
as incombustible. Great plenty is to be found thereof in Carpasia, as
likewise in the climate Dia Sienes, at very easy rates. O how rare and
admirable a thing it is, that the fire which devoureth, consumeth, and
destroyeth all such things else, should cleanse, purge, and whiten this
sole Pantagruelion Carpasian Asbeston! If you mistrust the verity of this
relation, and demand for further confirmation of my assertion a visible
sign, as the Jews and such incredulous infidels use to do, take a fresh
egg, and orbicularly, or rather ovally, enfold it within this divine
Pantagruelion. When it is so wrapped up, put it in the hot embers of a
fire, how great or ardent soever it be, and having left it there as long as
you will, you shall at last, at your taking it out of the fire, find the
egg roasted hard, and as it were burnt, without any alteration, change,
mutation, or so much as a calefaction of the sacred Pantagruelion. For
less than a million of pounds sterling, modified, taken down, and
amoderated to the twelfth part of one fourpence halfpenny farthing, you are
able to put it to a trial and make proof thereof.
Do not think to overmatch me here, by paragoning with it in the way of a
more eminent comparison the Salamander. That is a fib; for, albeit a
little ordinary fire, such as is used in dining-rooms and chambers,
gladden, cheer up, exhilarate, and quicken it, yet may I warrantably enough
assure that in the flaming fire of a furnace it will, like any other
animated creature, be quickly suffocated, choked, consumed, and destroyed.
We have seen the experiment thereof, and Galen many ages ago hath clearly
demonstrated and confirmed it, Lib. 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides
maintaineth the same doctrine, Lib. 2. Do not here instance in competition
with this sacred herb the feather alum or the wooden tower of Pyraeus,
which Lucius Sylla was never able to get burnt; for that Archelaus,
governor of the town for Mithridates, King of Pontus, had plastered it all
over on the outside with the said alum. Nor would I have you to compare
therewith the herb which Alexander Cornelius called Eonem, and said that it
had some resemblance with that oak which bears the mistletoe, and that it
could neither be consumed nor receive any manner of prejudice by fire nor
by water, no more than the mistletoe, of which was built, said he, the so
renowned ship Argos. Search where you please for those that will believe
it. I in that point desire to be excused. Neither would I wish you to
parallel therewith--although I cannot deny but that it is of a very
marvellous nature--that sort of tree which groweth alongst the mountains of
Brianson and Ambrun, which produceth out of his root the good agaric. From
its body it yieldeth unto us a so excellent rosin, that Galen hath been
bold to equal it to the turpentine. Upon the delicate leaves thereof it
retaineth for our use that sweet heavenly honey which is called the manna,
and, although it be of a gummy, oily, fat, and greasy substance, it is,
notwithstanding, unconsumable by any fire. It is in Greek and Latin called
Larix. The Alpinese name is Melze. The Antenorides and Venetians term it
Larege; which gave occasion to that castle in Piedmont to receive the
denomination of Larignum, by putting Julius Caesar to a stand at his return
from amongst the Gauls.
Julius Caesar commanded all the yeomen, boors, hinds, and other inhabitants
in, near unto, and about the Alps and Piedmont, to bring all manner of
victuals and provision for an army to those places which on the military
road he had appointed to receive them for the use of his marching soldiery.
To which ordinance all of them were obedient, save only those as were
within the garrison of Larignum, who, trusting in the natural strength of
the place, would not pay their contribution. The emperor, purposing to
chastise them for their refusal, caused his whole army to march straight
towards that castle, before the gate whereof was erected a tower built of
huge big spars and rafters of the larch-tree, fast bound together with pins
and pegs of the same wood, and interchangeably laid on one another, after
the fashion of a pile or stack of timber, set up in the fabric thereof to
such an apt and convenient height that from the parapet above the
portcullis they thought with stones and levers to beat off and drive away
such as should approach thereto.
When Caesar had understood that the chief defence of those within the
castle did consist in stones and clubs, and that it was not an easy matter
to sling, hurl, dart, throw, or cast them so far as to hinder the
approaches, he forthwith commanded his men to throw great store of bavins,